My Professor Read online

  My Professor

  Copyright © 2022 R.S. Grey

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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  This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  Published: R.S. Grey 2022

  [email protected]

  Editing: Editing by C. Marie

  Proofreading: Red Leaf Proofing, Julia Griffis

  Cover Design: R.S. Grey

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  My Professor

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  II. Four Years Later

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Excerpt

  Love the One You Hate

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Stay Connected

  Afterword

  Author’s Note:

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  My Professor is a full-length standalone novel. At the end, I’ve included an excerpt from my bestselling romance Love the One You Hate.

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  My Professor concludes at around 90% on your device.

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  Happy Reading!

  XO, RS Grey

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Jonathan

  * * *

  Today is not a good day.

  In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s absolute shit.

  It started small: a toe stubbed on the corner of my bed frame. Excruciating, sure, but I persevered. When I went to scramble some eggs for my breakfast, I found an empty carton in my refrigerator. For that, I only have myself to blame. My housekeeper is good about stocking up, but only if I keep a list of what I need. While I was rifling through my pantry, trying to find something else to eat, my business partner called, complaining about how bureaucratic red tape and zoning issues will halt progress on our Amherst project for another six weeks. Now, I’m on the side of the freeway, listening to a kid try to explain to me how it’s my fault he slammed into the back of my car while we were in stop-and-go traffic.

  “You didn’t have to slam on your brakes like that, man!” he says, throwing up his hands.

  I don’t even bother arguing with him. There are soggy Frosted Flakes dripping down from where they splattered across his front windshield during the accident. He was clearly driving while distracted. His car is likely totaled. Mine is still drivable, but the fender’s hanging off the back, and besides, I have to wait for the police to get here so they can draw up an incident report.

  This series of events is un-fucking-believable.

  The bright sun beats down from overhead, and I check my watch for the thousandth time. I’m going to be late for my lecture. I already missed a faculty meeting this morning. Okay, yes, they’re a waste of time anyway, but it’s the principle of it. I don’t miss meetings. I never show up late for my ten AM lecture at Dartmouth.

  Today happens to be the first day of the fall semester, and pretty soon there will be an auditorium full of students waiting for me to arrive. I tug on the collar of my shirt, pissed beyond measure but trying to keep it together.

  “Are you even listening?! This is your fault, you asshole!”

  I look over at the kid, finally gracing him with my full attention, and he has the decency to step back as if slightly nervous. Maybe he’s only now registering who he’s dealing with or perhaps it’s something in my expression, but he finally does the smart thing and shuts up.

  I should have taken the toe stub as a proper warning and just stayed home today.

  It’s another hour before I’m back on track. A tow truck is dragging my car back to Boston to get serviced, my insurance is working on a claim, and I’m in a hired car being driven the rest of the way to Hanover, massaging my temples.

  On a good day (read: not today), I have a lot on my plate. My architectural conservation firm is still in its infancy, and it requires constant care and attention. Even with my business partner taking half the workload, I could shackle myself to my desk at Banks and Barclay from sun up to sun down, seven days a week, and still not get everything done. It’s partly because I’m a perfectionist and partly because we’re expanding at breakneck speeds. In the last election, Boston approved a major infrastructure bond package, part of which funnels tax dollars toward restoration work around the city. My firm has taken on a good many of these projects. In the last two months, we’ve hired twelve new people and let an equal number go. I’ve blown through three assistants, two CAD designers, a survey technician, and a project manager because they weren’t up to snuff. I won’t abide laziness or incompetence. I won’t hold someone’s hand or give them second chances. Too much is on the line.

  I could always leave the world of academia and lighten my load, but I won’t. I only teach one course at Dartmouth, and it meets just twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s my fourth year at the university. In the beginning, the dean of the architecture school wined and dined me to get me to accept the position. I’d just won a Pritzker Prize for my conservation work on the Washington National Cathedral, but I wasn’t sure where I wanted to take my career. I was solo then, my firm not yet in existence. Meanwhile, Dartmouth was eager to infuse life into an undergraduate program that routinely ranked below Yale, MIT, and Harvard, and they saw me as their way to do it.

  It’s worked out well. Now that I’ve been teaching for a few years, the course requires very little effort on my part. My teaching assistants handle office hours, and they also grade tests and papers based on rubrics I provide. I care immensely about the course topics and am passionate about what I teach, which is why I’m currently enduring this hell.

  “Shame about your car,” my driver says, drawing my attention to the front seat. “Saw it before they hauled it away. That’s a nice whip.” I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror, and he grins conspiratorially. “Bet it gets you a lot of ladies, huh?”

  I make some noncommittal sound as if to say, I heard you but am unwilling to participate in this conversation.

  “Got a girlfriend?”

  What part of me massaging my temples makes this guy think I want to chat?

  “No girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, don’t blame you. My girl back home is a real piece of work…”

  After the morning I’ve had, fate could have at least taken pity on me and blessed me with a mute driver. Instead I have this.

  I let him drone on as my phone rings. It’s my business partner again.

  I answer the call with a nice, clipped “What?”

  Christopher’s
already mid-curse. “—assholes on the zoning board won’t listen to the fact that we’ve already filed a variance request concerning the sidewalk we have to remove—”

  “Have Joan call. They usually listen to her.”

  “We already tried that! When are you getting to the office?”

  “Not until two, and that’s if I’m lucky. I’ll be taking the train back from Hanover.”

  “The train? You’re kidding. Why?”

  “A kid crashed into me an hour ago on I-93. I still haven’t made it to Dartmouth.”

  “Christ! This fucking day!” Christopher explodes. “Who did we piss off? Who put a curse on us? Do we need to get a shaman in here to sage the office?” He sighs. “Why don’t you just get a car back to the city?”

  “I could, but…”

  I clear my throat and have the decency to stop talking before I admit aloud that the train doesn’t come with an annoying driver.

  As if on cue, my driver speaks up, “Sir, it looks like I’m getting low on gas. Do you want me to stop and fill up or…”

  “Or what?” I press, because I need him to see this from my perspective. What’s the alternative? Run out of gas on the highway?

  He nods. “Right, yeah. I’ll pull over and fill up.”

  “Christopher, I gotta go.” …before I lose my mind.

  I hang up and check my watch again.

  Ten minutes until class.

  Ten minutes.

  Shit.

  Chapter Two

  Emelia

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  I’m sitting, minding my own business on the first day of my junior year at Dartmouth. Having succeeded in banking a perfect GPA for two straight years, I’m feeling confident and excited for what this semester has to offer. I’m going to keep my nose to the grindstone and stay focused. No distractions, no—

  My best friend slides into the chair next to me and her shoulder collides with mine, jostling me out of my internal pep talk.

  “Oof, sorry about that.”

  Sonya’s apologetic puppy dog eyes are as adorable as the rest of her. A round-faced redhead with fair skin and striking brown eyes, she’s completely unaware of the fact that she’s still crowding my personal space. She and I have roomed together since freshman year, and she’s always crossing boundaries, leaving her things strewn about, borrowing my clothes without asking. Once I found her using my toothbrush and nearly vomited. She didn’t seem to think it was weird.

  “Oh my god, I was so worried. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d make it in time for the show. I got caught up with the barista at Starbucks. He always wants to flirt with me.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been there, seen it—the poor guy is just asking for your coffee order, Sonya.”

  “You should hear the way he says it though…What can I get you? All husky like. Jeez, down boy.”

  “You’re insufferable.”

  “I’m horny. There’s a difference.”

  The students in front of us stir in their seats; a few peer back curiously. Sonya waggles her fingers at them, unbothered.

  “Did you print out the lecture slides?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  “Absolutely not. I need a pen too.”

  “Honestly, how did you get into this school?”

  She mimes giving a blow job, and I laugh despite myself.

  It’s a joke, of course. Sonya is one of the smartest people I know. Capricious, flighty, ill-prepared, sure, but ridiculously intelligent too. She’s here on a full ride.

  She leans in close to me and tries to whisper, “So did you bring a spare pair of panties or what?”

  I heave a deep sigh to indicate I’m not indulging her this morning. “No, because unlike you, I can control myself.”

  “Oh, can you? Is that why last semester you set your alarm for four AM to register for this class?”

  “I need it for my major,” I insist, sitting up straighter in my chair, repositioning my lecture notes neatly on my desk. I’m affecting a Perfect Student posture, but Sonya doesn’t fall for it.

  She rolls her eyes, unimpressed. “You’re here for the same reason we all are.”

  She sweeps her hand across the room, but I already know what she’s hinting at. The ratio of girls to guys in this auditorium is laughable. It’s 90:10, easily. It’s not that guys aren’t interested in architectural conservation; it’s that the spots for this class fill up fast.

  Every student at Dartmouth knows of Professor Barclay. There’s fact: he’s a prodigy with a Pritzker Prize and multiple publications under his belt at the ripe age of 32. Then there’s fiction: he’s a descendant of Swedish nobility, he modeled for Ralph Lauren in the late 2000s, he used to date Natalie Portman.

  “I’m here because this course overlaps with the topic of my junior thesis project.”

  Sonya gives me a mocking nod. “Good. That almost sounded genuine. So you’re going to go through with it then? Asking him to be your adviser?”

  “Absolutely. I plan on talking to him after class.”

  There are only a handful of professors in the department whose focus of study overlaps with the topic of my project. Professor Barclay happens to be one of them. Sonya would say that’s no coincidence, but what does she know?

  I’ve prepared a little speech and everything. My pithy elevator pitch will knock his socks off.

  “There’s no way everyone in here is registered for this class,” Sonya says, turning around in her seat to look around the lecture hall.

  I agree. “I got here twenty minutes early and the front half was already full.”

  This course is a requirement for upper-division undergraduates within the school of architecture, but it’s also an option for other students who need an upper-division elective, like Sonya.

  “Professor Barclay’s popularity knows no bounds,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows.

  Apparently.

  It’s ten minutes past the start of class time. He should be here right now. In other classes, people would be complaining. Instead, it only seems to build the anticipation to a fever pitch until the side door of the auditorium opens and heads whip in that direction. A hush immediately falls over the crowd as the man of the hour walks in.

  Slowly, like I’m stepping into a hot bath, a flush starts to creep up my body as I get my first good look at him.

  I’m surprised, actually, to find that the rumors about him are true. In fact, they don’t do him justice.

  He’s unlike any professor I’ve seen before. No tweed jacket. No 1970s handlebar mustache. No tire protruding around his middle. The man is…inappropriately good-looking.

  Sonya leans into me and whispers, “God.”

  He walks with long confident strides toward the podium in the center of the room, and I use the opportunity to catalogue every detail, even though I know I shouldn’t. From this distance, I can’t make out his eye color—a pity—but his hair is a warm brown, thick and styled to the advantage of his features. His sharp jaw is nearly obscene, especially paired with the cleft in his chin. All combined, it’s chiseled perfection on par with Mr. Superman himself.

  I only realize as an afterthought that his dark heavy brows are furrowed with a look of annoyance as he drops his leather bag beside the podium and starts to log into the lecture hall’s computer. While he works, and without looking up at us, he begins to speak in a curt, impatient tone.

  “I apologize for the late start. I’m Professor Barclay, and this is ARC 521, History and Philosophy of Historic Preservation. This course explores the values and ethics of preservation and urban conservation to set the framework for judgments and choices made in building projects. Our topics of study will include issues related to tradition and innovation, as well as various types of historic preservation such as private restoration, adaptive use, and conservation.”

  He caps off his short summary with a sigh of frustration at the computer, which is taking its sweet time letting him log in. Giving up for the moment, he props his hands on the podium
and leans toward the class, finally deigning to look up at us.

  My breath arrests in my chest.

  I swear we all collectively lean toward him.

  “This course consists of three lecture hours a week. We’ll meet here at ten AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Though the details and framework of the course are outlined in your syllabus, which you may read on your own time, I want to be clear that your grade will be made up of three exams as well as one term paper. Each one is weighted an even twenty-five percent. I won’t take attendance. I won’t assign homework. Keep up with the reading or fall behind—it’s your choice.”

  His computer finally allows him to log in, and he inserts a USB drive, finds the file he’s looking for, and opens his lecture slides. Then he begins.

  “As many of you well know, historic preservation plays an important role in American society. Think of the Empire State Building, the White House, the Guggenheim—these are buildings known across the globe, and they form the bedrock of our nation’s identity. Why is it important to preserve them? How can we use historic buildings to better serve their surrounding communities? In this class, we’ll discover how we can use architectural conservation as a way to remember the past and lay the groundwork for a more sustainable future.”